On Mon, 14 Mar 2022 at 18:21, Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: > > From how you described it, I assumed you were talking about DEXE's. > You said "runs DOS like a program under Linux" which is very similar > to the "DOSEMU apps" (DEXE's) I mentioned. > http://www.dosemu.org/docs/README/0.99/README-4.html
No. In fact I had never even heard of that before. Sounds like it was probably very useful a quarter of a century ago. :-) You know the maxim about "never assume", right? ;-) > I don't agree that this feature "makes DOS apps part of the apps on > the computer" DOS apps (not games but productivity applications) are by nature text mode apps, with only a few modern exceptions which probably won't work well on DOSemu anyway. All xNix text-mode apps are designed and intended to exchange information by means of plain text: either text files, or pipes. DOS apps under DOSemu *windows* work on whatever is in the Linux filesystem, and that generally includes the ability to import or export plain-text files. And if you run them without graphics support, you can pipe their output to other shell commands. For me, that means that DOS apps can be used alongside with, and interact with, Linux apps. That is what I was getting at when I said that they work alongside Linux apps, as just another type of binary you can run -- in a way that is _not_ true of DOS inside a VM. > but rather that FreeDOS (running in DOSEMU) and Linux > can access the same files at the same time via a shared folder. Same files, yes. Shared folder? No. Why DOSemu was valuable *to me* is that I *didn't* need a shared folder: everything DOS could see was Linux folders, including its C drive and my home directory and so on. Same _time_? Eeeeek! That sounds like a recipe for file corruption. No, not tried and don't want to. But surely that isn't what you meant? > Maybe > that's a minor point, but "making DOS apps part of the apps on the > computer" implies to me something like a DEXE. Um. I suppose that I can see what you mean, but you don't need that. You can just invoke a DOS binary straight from the command line: http://www.dosemu.org/docs/README/1.4/x724.html Again, I don't think you can do this with a VM and so these solutions don't appeal to me. TBH I am a bit surprised at this mailing list's apparent position on DOSemu. FreeDOS is the default OS supplied with DOSemu 1 and has been for many many years. DOSemu 1 still works and is still included in many distros, e.g. openSUSE. It's gone from Ubuntu 20.04 but it was there in 18.04 and still works. It's easy to add. For me, it had multiple advantages that VMs don't have, so I am puzzled that it sounds like nobody uses it any more and everyone considers that it's gone away. > As others have already said, you can also use a Linux directory as a > DOS drive. Darrin pointed to a way to do it in QEMU, and Robert > pointed to vvfat in Bochs. Interesting workarounds, but I'm still interested in getting the original, simpler tool working, so I don't need any virtual disk drives or anything. Is that a strange thing to want? It doesn't feel like it is to me, but I do feel like an odd man out on this list. :-( -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
